Ross: Not keeping workers safe is a threat to national security
May 12, 2020, 9:16 AM | Updated: Oct 7, 2024, 10:01 am
The Tyson Foods plant in Waterloo, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
The President reassured us recently that our meat will be fine.
“The meat packing plants are doing very well,” he promised. “There’s great testing around those plants, we found out who had the problem and they’re being quarantined. And the meat packing is moving along very nicely.”
Close call. Those empty meat shelves got a little too real for a moment.
But meat packers were warned years ago that their plants were incubators for flu – back when flu was all there was – and yet most still didn’t provide paid sick leave. One company, Tyson, would actually score disciplinary points against workers who called in sick.
They stopped doing that, and yet I heard on the radio the other day that while Tyson has indeed relaxed its attendance policy, it still doesn’t offer full paid sick leave. That has its employees continuing to work even while sick.
When I heard that, I thought that it didn’t make sense.
The presidential directive says meat packing is now critical to national security … but the meat doesn’t pack itself, so therefore, the health of the workers in those plants is also critical to national security.
So, any company whose workers feel pressure to work despite being sick is threatening national security, in an election year no less. I hope for their sake the president doesn’t find out about that.
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